Marshfield girl lives by motto of new book

Saturday

Jun 3, 2017 at 6:00 AMJun 4, 2017 at 1:51 PM

Ella Dargan of Marshfield is proud to represent a unique kind of beauty in the book, "Strong is the New Pretty."

When Ella Dargan first saw her entry in the “Strong is the New Pretty” photo book this February, she didn’t love it. It’s a close-up, unedited photo of her from two years before, and her hundreds of freckles are front and center.

Now, the 11-year-old is proud to represent a unique kind of beauty and to help build the confidence of other girls with uncommon features.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Ella said. “It’s a good message that the book explains, so I was proud to be a part of it.”

Atlanta-based photographer Kate Parker created the “Strong is the New Pretty” coffee table book as a way to celebrate the strength and uniqueness of her two young daughters.

After traveling across the country to photograph young girls, she put together a 250-page collection of quotes and photos including Marshfield’s Ella Dargan.

After being sent an open call for subjects, Ella’s mom Lauren Dargan submitted a few photos and description of her daughter. Her entry focused on Ella’s struggle with anxiety when she was younger.

“She was able to be worried about things, but overcome it every day using her own little kind of strength,” Lauren said.

A little while later, the pair met Parker in Newton and spent time discussing beauty, strength and confidence.

Lauren said she wanted to get her daughter, the only girl of her four children, involved to show her that self-worth doesn’t have to come from external appearance.

“As a mom and a girl and woman, I regularly think about how to make a little girl feel strong about herself,” she said. “It seems like in today’s world there is so much to get through and you’re expected to prove yourself all the time, so I wanted to have her be a part of something that talked about not just looks and not just a score on a test.”

A fifth-grader at Martinson Elementary, Ella plays soccer and field hockey. Her go-to uniform is sneakers and a T-shirt, and she knows her brothers would tease her endlessly if she spent the day playing with Barbie dolls.

Instead, she jumps into their wrestling matches and hockey games, and she said she’s tougher for growing up with the boys.

“To me, being strong is being able to conquer your fears and, like, if you have a problem, solving it,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean being muscular … and if you fail, you just get right back up and try again.”

Ella knows she doesn’t look like the average girl her age, but she said fitting in isn’t what defines her beauty.

“Pretty means you have a strength in you,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you have to look nice. They’re always happy and make other people happy, and pretty people have a great positive attitude.”

Since the book came, Ella and her mom have spent a lot of time talking about the people in it and Ella’s own entry. Over the last few months, she has started to love the photo, which takes up a whole page and is accompanied by the quote “I love my freckles. They’re part of me.”

Lauren has watched her daughter grow into her own in the two years since the photo was taken.

“We try to talk all the time about how proud we are, mainly with how she just tries all the time,” she said. “She’s a hard worker in everything she does. She pays attention to being nice, and she thinks about how to follow her moral compass in everything she does.”

As she gets ready for middle school, Ella said she knows there will be more and more girls who struggle with confidence, but she has advice for them.

“You don’t have to look good and do everything right, you just need to try your hardest and be as strong as you can.”

“Strong is the New Pretty” was released in March, and Ella’s entry is on pages 100 and 101.